1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed broadly relates to the field of Internet Search Engines and E-commerce technology, and has special application to the emerging on-line markets of web-based auction sites.
2. Description of the Related Art
The electronic auction sales paradigm exemplified by web-based auction sites such as such as eBay, Onsale, Yahoo and the like allows purchasers to bid for items they want to buy. The great advantage of this business model is that the potential buyer has the possibility to define the price that he/she is willing to pay for this item. In contrast to traditional sales/purchase paradigms, a ‘price’ in this electronic marketplace is not a fixed quantity, but rather a dynamic entity. Because of this fact, the popularity of web-based auction sites is growing rapidly. Additionally, more and more purchasers are becoming involved and taking advantage of this auction based buying on the World Wide Web (WWW). In the near future it is highly probable that dynamic prices for buying items will become a standard, especially as world commercial markets become more tightly integrated.
The problem present with the prior art is the inherent difficulty for the purchaser in managing this kind of price-based buying. There are several problems for a potential buyer. First, Web-based auctions produce fierce competition. Because of the possibilities of the Internet the competition in price bidding is neither geographically nor temporally limited. Purchasers are able to bid 24 hours a day from essentially any place in the world. Because of this competition, it is not guaranteed that a purchaser eventually succeeded in purchasing the item that he/she desires. To ensure that the purchaser even has a good chance at success with this bidding system, he/she must be diligent regarding both monitoring of auction sites and placement of bids for desired items.
A second problem for a potential buyer is managing bids across one or more sites. There are growing number web-based auction sites, making management of bids across these different sites difficult. One and the same item can be sold on different sites simultaneously and independently (e.g. a seller wants to increase the probability of selling the item, so he/she submits the same item on different web-based auctions). This structure is difficult to manage and coordinate manually using conventional web-based user interface tools.
A third problem is the purchase of a commodity product. Most times a buyer need not have a particular item, but rather is purchasing a commodity product. The desired item could be a mass product (e.g. CDROM, music cassette, etc.) and as such there may be a wide variety of sources for the product. So one auction site can offer mass products items in several auctions simultaneously from different sellers. Additionally, there can be more then one auction web site that offers this type of item. For instance, a ‘greatest hits’ compact disc of a popular rock band is a commodity product, wherein thousands of copies will typically be available for sale. In this case there could be several ongoing auctions on the same or different web sites from different sellers. The problem for the purchaser in these circumstances is to choose the best auction for the desired item.
Current software tools available to purchasers within web-based auction contexts do not address these deficiencies and as such the bidding process in these situations generally is dictated as much by luck as by the skill and experience of the purchaser.